


Intuition and Ingenuity

by Beatrice_Otter



Category: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Gen, Male Character of Color, POV Character of Color, Racism, Stalking, blackinfanfiction, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 04:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2837789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Otter/pseuds/Beatrice_Otter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny knew something was fishy when he got the letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intuition and Ingenuity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stars_inthe_sky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_inthe_sky/gifts).



> "Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity."—Alan Turing.
> 
> Betaed by zvi and Dryad. Thank you so much guys.

Danny has always known he was different—his mom says (and his dad said when his dad was alive to say anything) that he's special, but he's smart enough to figure out what they meant. He's always known there are things he gets taught that most kids don't.

You can't be a black kid in a mostly-white neighborhood and not know about being different. Things Danny's parents teach him that many of his friends never have to worry about: how to look "normal" and non-threatening. How to respond when people ask if you're lost when you're walking down your own block. And how to respect cops while never, ever forgetting that they may not respect _you_.

It wasn't until later—much later—that Danny realized that the other lessons his Mom started giving him, after his dad died, fell into the same category of necessary life skills. What she couldn't teach herself she found classes for him. Things that most black boys didn't get taught by their mothers: how to use guns, not just handguns but heavy firepower, and how to be accurate about it. How to grow a garden indoors. More first-aid than you could get from the Red Cross classes. Cutting edge computer science.

Each time she signed him up for a class, each time she quizzed him on what he's learned, she had that same pinched look on her face. By the time he was twenty and halfway through college (as an accounting major, though he couldn't _quite_ defy his mother enough to drop the comp sci and biology courses), he'd realized it was the same look she got whenever she talked about anything related to his father's death.

(It was a weird death, okay? Whatever the Die Hard movies have to say, you just don't get terrorists in SoCal much. He doesn't remember much of it, but he knows that. And he knows that the fragments he remembers don't match the news reports he looked up as he got older.)

When they approached him the first time, Danny thought back to his mother's lessons. Not the _other_ lessons, but the ones every black kid gets.

It came in a letter—an actual, paper letter—which he almost threw out as junk mail. (Not from anyone he knew, not a bill, an official-looking envelope, but sometimes the junk mailers got sneaky.) But he wasn't sure, so he opened it. And there, to his surprise, he saw an offer to apply to a job.

"Hey, man, I'd go for it," said Mike, who was folding his socks, because he was anal like that. There were worse flaws in a roommate. "Gotta be better than work-study in the cafeteria, right?"

"No kidding," Danny said with a grimace. Most students on work-study got assigned to the caf or groundskeeping/maintenance their first year, and found other jobs (off campus or on) after that, but not everyone did. Danny liked the flexibility of a job that put his school schedule first, and he hadn't gotten any of the other campus jobs he applied to. (Wouldn't you know it, most of the other upperclassmen stuck working in the caf like he was had darker complexions of one hue or another?) "But it's weird. Like, third-year accounting majors are not exactly in high demand. Nobody goes around recruiting us. Not for anything but unpaid internships."

"When you put it that way," Mike said, shrugging. Socks neatly put away, he flopped on his bed. "But hey, even lightning strikes some times. Maybe they need someone who does both accounting and programming?"

"I can name four seniors with those double-majors," Danny said. "One of 'em is Ryan Roverud who's been a straight-A student all four years. If someone was headhunting programmer-accountants, he's who they'd go for." Also, Ryan was a pasty-assed white boy from Minnesota, not a black kid from California. On the other hand, if they'd gotten a list of accounting/programming students from the school, it wouldn't list his race, and "Daniel Dyson" was not exactly a black-sounding name. Maybe he was being paranoid.

"Okay, maybe it's a friend of your mom's," Mike said. "Or maybe a friend of your dad's." He brightened. "Oh! I know! Maybe it's somebody patriotic, wants to give the hero's kid a start in life! Your dad was killed by terrorists, right?"

"No," Danny said. His mom had told him the truth as soon as she knew it; he'd been seventeen at the time, and had spent the next year really, really angry at cops everywhere for killing his dad and then covering it up. He still was, but it wasn't the first thing he remembered in the morning any more. "My Dad was killed by the SWAT team trying to stop the terrorists who'd kidnapped him. Also, these were weird crazy American terrorists, not the Islamic terrorists that are always on the news."

"Still could be," Mike said. "Look, it's a job! What's the worst that could happen?"

"It's a crime ring and they want a stupid black kid to take the fall for their money-laundering if the cops come sniffing around."

Mike laughed. "Good one! No, seriously?"

Danny just looked at him.

"Wow," Mike said, laughing. "I had no idea your imagination was that good. But seriously, how can you ever expect to get ahead in life if you look at all opportunities like they're traps?"

"This is an opportunity like a Nigerian scam e-mail is an opportunity," Danny grumbled.

Still, he went to the interview like Mike thought he should. He was curious, and Mike insisted, and it was possible that this was legit. (Not likely, but possible.) He wore his nicest shirt and tie, his lucky key chain, and his bullshit-meter turned up to ten.

The start of the interview was fairly normal. Moreno Valley Solutions was a consulting company that advised businesses on their tech and web needs, offering a "nuanced analysis of emerging market trends to help businesses leverage their strong points in a changing 21st Century world!" They were looking for part-time people with both accounting and computer knowledge to do some of the scut-work of switching their accounting and payroll departments over to new systems. It was a short-term gig with the possibility of being hired on full-time after graduation, and the pay scale was only slightly better than what Danny would have expected for a position like it: better than an unpaid internship, but not by much. It was still better than what he was making in the caf, which was federal minimum wage.

The HR lady asked normal questions—job history, academics, a time when he failed at something and what he learned from it, a time he achieved something good, how he worked with others. Eventually she smiled and asked him to wait for a bit while she left and consulted with someone else.

Danny drummed his fingers on the table, bored, as he waited. After about five minutes (but it felt so much longer!) a balding middle-aged white man dressed in business casual entered. Danny stood to greet him.

"Daniel, right?" the guy said. "Or do you go by Danny?"

"It's Danny," he said, though he'd been thinking of going with 'Dan' for a while. Danny sounded juvenile, but Dan sounded like a boring old white guy.

"Danny! Let me introduce myself," the guy said, gesturing back at the seat Danny had just risen from. "I'm Jim Atkinson of the Kaliba Group. We just purchased Moreno Valley Solutions."

Danny sat back down, smoothing his tie. Kaliba Group rang a bell, though he couldn't quite place it. Did they have a booth at the career fair at college? "Hence the need to switch over from one system to another," Danny said.

"Exactly," Atkinson said with a smile. "And we've found it goes a lot smoother when you have people doing the transferring that understand both sides—the accounting side and the programming side."

"I can imagine," Danny said. "My focus is really on the accounting side, but I hope I can bring the whole package to the table."

"Oh, don't be so modest, Danny." Atkinson's smile got wider. "I'm sure that Miles Dyson's son is an excellent programmer, just like his daddy was."

Danny felt his face freeze. Kaliba group—they owned Cyberdyne Systems. _That's_ where he knew it from! "I do my best," he said, "but the computer science isn't my strong point—it's mostly just to feel closer to my dad."

Atkinson beamed at him. Seriously, Danny had never in his life seen a white man smile that broadly. "That's so sweet! I'm sure he would be very proud. I started out in Cyberdyne, and your father was such a hero to me. His programming was ahead of its time, he was brilliant! And so heroic to stand up to terrorists like that."

"Right," Danny managed to say, biting his tongue. _Don't upset the crazy white dude_ overrode the instinctive need to tell what _really_ happened to his dad.

"I know that you must treasure your memories of him," Atkinson said, "but like I said he was a hero of mine. If you have any of his projects that he might have kept at home, I'd be willing to pay a nice price for them. Software, in particular—it doesn't have to be the original, a copy would be fine. Then you could still keep the memories for yourself! And I know how expensive school is these days. I'm sure you could use the money."

 _As if I'd give anything of Dad's to_ you _,_ Danny thought, pleasant expression still on his face. "I do have a lot of great memories of my Dad, but not much that's work related—he was always very security conscious, and didn't bring stuff home that I know of. Sorry, man." He shook his head in mock regret.

"Well!" Atkinson said. "It was worth a shot." He stood, reaching into his pocket to pull out a business card. "If you ever find anything, let me know."

"I'll do that," Danny said, taking the card and pocketing it.

"I think Sue said she was done with your interview," Atkinson said. "Make sure you check with the desk on the way out to make sure, though."

"Thank you for the interview," Danny said, because his mom had taught him to be polite. But he wanted nothing more than to be out of there.

"No trouble at all!" Atkinson said. With another smile, he left.

Danny sagged once his back was turned, and took a few seconds to collect himself before gathering his things to make a quick exit. Not wanting to draw attention to himself as anything out of the ordinary, he stopped by the desk on the way out and collected the packet they had for him.

In his haste to get away, he made the rookie mistake of not looking before he turned around and headed out, and ran _right_ into a big white guy. Big. Like, Schwarzenegger big. The guy could have played in a Sylvester Stallone movie, or any 80s action movie with overmuscled blond guys shooting at each other.

"Hey, sorry there, buddy," Danny said, stepping back. "I'll be more careful next time."

"Do that," the man said, tonelessly, not moving out of the way.

"So, I, uh, was just picking up this packet on the way out," Danny said. "That Mister Atkinson, he's sure a nice guy, huh?"

"Yes," the man said as tonelessly as before. He pivoted to watch Danny as he sidled out of the way. If Atkinson pinged his weird-o-meter, _this_ dude set his bad-news-alarm blaring.

"I'm Danny, nice to meet you," Danny said, sticking out his hand. Sometimes people were nicer to someone they knew, even superficially.

"I'm Jones. I work in security." Jones shook his hand, but that voice—still no inflection.

"You don't say," Danny said. "I'll, uh, I'll just go now! I have a class to get back for." He could feel Jones' eyes on him as he left.

* * *

"I am never taking your advice again," Danny said, dropping his bag onto the desk and flopping down on his bed.

"That bad, eh?" Mike said, sounding amused. He tipped his chair back from his desk, balancing on the two back legs. "What, were they _actually_ a criminal money-laundering operation?"

"No," Danny said. "Owned by the same group that owned the company my Dad works for, and this creepy dude wants to buy any technical stuff my dad left lying around the house. Specifically programming, he said."

"Okay, so what?" Mike said. "Either sell it or don't. What's that got to do with the job?"

"The dude smiles like a serial killer," Danny said. "And my Dad wasn't a programmer, he was a cyberneticist. He did _some_ programming, but the hardware was his specialty. And why would he assume _I_ might have anything, and not my Mom? I know various people from Cyberdyne have kept in contact with her over the years, and I know she's been asked more than once if Dad had anything lying around the house that might be proprietary Cyberdyne Systems technology. If she hasn't given them anything, why would I?"

"Maybe they think you're more desperate for money, being a poor college student," Mike pointed out. "Or maybe the creep wants to go into business for himself and wants to scoop up anything the main guys have missed."

"Maybe," Danny said. "Anyway, I ran into—literally—this big bruiser of a security guard at the front desk. We're talking 80s action hero, here. And there was definitely _something_ going on with him, I don't know what, but it was like he was looking for a reason to hit me."

"Freaky," Mike said, raising his eyebrows. "Maybe not a job you really want to take, then."

"Not if it would put me in the same building regularly as good ol' Jones from Security," Danny agreed.

* * *

Danny got a formal job offer in the mail and sent back a polite refusal. He figured that was the end of it, but it wasn't.

"Hey, Danny, do you know this guy?" Mike said, standing at the window. "I've been seeing him hanging around the building lately."

"Hm?" Danny said, looking up from his accounting textbook. Finals were coming up, and he'd been buried in reviewing. Anything outside of a textbook, and he hadn't seen it in the last week.

"Come here," Mike said.

Danny got up from the desk, stretching as he did so. He glanced at the clock—woah, later than he thought. He needed a break. No point in frying his brain. He couldn't wait for summer. Wandering over to the window, he peered out at the guy Mike pointed out.

"No way!" Danny said, leaning forward.

"What?" Mike said.

"It's that guy! The security guy from the interview. Jones from Security!" Danny ducked back out of sight.

"You're kidding," Mike said.

"No, it's definitely him," Danny said.

"Okay, that's creepy, but maybe he's here for something else?" Mike said. But his voice wavered, like even he didn't believe it.

"You say you've seen him hanging around the last several days?" Danny said.

"Yeah," Mike said. "Should we call the campus cops?"

"Over what?" Danny said. "He's just standing there, and I only just noticed him. We're not blonde coeds—you think they'll believe stalking without more evidence? If he keeps showing up, sure. Let me know if you see him again."

"Okay," Mike said, dubiously.

* * *

Danny stared down at the phone in his hand. On the one hand, Mom would want to know about this, and he desperately wanted her reassuring him that everything was going to be fine. On the other hand … what could she possibly say to make it better? There was a muscular white guy following him around campus and skulking in bushes.

He didn't want to worry her. He put his phone away.

* * *

Three days later, Jones from Security was still popping up in the oddest places. Sure enough, the campus cops couldn't do anything about it.

"You say he hasn't actually done anything, Danny?" the rent-a-cop said, frowning. He hadn't introduced himself, but his nametag read Martins. "Just stood there?"

"Yeah," Danny said. "But he's _always_ around, watching. He doesn't talk to anyone, he doesn't care what the weather's like, he shows up wherever I happen to be when I go out."

"He's really creepy," Mike agreed.

Martins sighed. "Unfortunately, there's no law against being creepy, and there isn't a campus policy about it, either. It's a free country."

"Right," Danny said sourly.

"And you met him at an interview at Moreno Valley Solutions?" Martins said. "I think I'll call them, see what I can find about him."

* * *

Danny sat at his desk and stared under his bunk. Mike wasn't due back for another two hours, and the door was locked. This was a _really_ bad idea.

He knelt down and reached under the bed anyway. And there, behind a few camouflaging boxes of other stuff, was his gun safe. The one the school authorities didn't know about. (Danny had all the paperwork and permits to show he legally owned them and used them for target shooting, but the school had a no-guns-on-campus policy. But his Mom had insisted he take it.)

He unlocked it and stared at the gun and ammunition inside it.

If he got caught with a gun in his room in a gun safe (very unlikely) that was one thing. If someone figured out that he was carrying a gun around _with_ him, _on campus_ —he'd be _lucky_ to be expelled. They'd find something to charge him with. A gun charge could ruin his life. He'd be labeled a thug.

Danny didn't have a concealed-carry holster, and it was too warm for the kind of bulky coats that would make a regular holster disappear. Even when they got days rainy or cold enough to wear a hoody, it would probably show. He'd have to keep it in his bag, and just keep the bag slung over his shoulder for easy access. It would be a pain.

And what if Jones from Security _did_ attack him, and Danny shot him? Even with Mike to testify Jones was stalking him, a black guy who killed a white guy did hard time. It might almost be better to let Jones beat him up and hope someone called the cops.

But what if they didn't get there in time?

He would rather be in prison than dead.

Danny took the gun out, cleaned it, loaded it, double-checked that the safety was on, put it in its holster, and stuck it in his bag.

He'd just have to be careful about it.

* * *

The next day, Danny came home to a roommate swearing a blue streak at his laptop. "Hey, it's not the laptop's fault you bought a Dell piece of shit," Danny said, amused. "Just 'cause it's cheap doesn't mean it's a good value."

Many of his fellow comp sci students were Macs, but Danny was a PC … but there were PCs and then there were _PCs_. His Lenovo was much more reliable than Mike's Dell. He punched the power button and went to put his books away.

By the time he got back, it was asking him if he wanted to boot back up in safe mode. Danny stared at the screen. "What?"

"Yeah, I keep getting that, too," Mike said.

After an hour of swearing at his own computer (and getting progressively more baffled by it), Danny gave up. He would get no end of shit for this, but he needed his laptop working. "That's it, we're going to tech support," he said, packing up his computer bag, angling it towards him so Mike couldn’t see the gun in it.

* * *

By this point, it was second nature to keep his eyes peeled for Jones as he walked across campus. He didn't spot him, but that didn't mean he wasn't there. He and Mike trotted up the steps of the library. It was a relief to be inside a building again—Jones was less likely to show up.

"Seriously, Danny?" Ryan Roverud was manning the school tech help desk that evening.

"Don't give me any shit 'till you've tried to fix these," Danny warned him. "There is something really whacked going on." He pulled out his laptop and glanced over at Mike. "I'm planning on staying here, seeing if I can help Ryan figure it out, but you don't have to."

"Wasn't planning on it," Mike said affably, getting out his own laptop. "I'll see you later."

* * *

An hour later, Ryan was talking about calling in reinforcements. Well, more reinforcements—he'd already consulted with a couple of hacker discussion boards.

"Seriously?" Danny said. They were both crowded behind the small desk, looking at the two laptops. When the library was designed and built in the 50s, tech support wasn't really something they'd planned for. Danny suspected this "office" had once been a closet.

"Seriously," Ryan said. "This is a virus nobody's ever seen before, and it's infected _everything_ on your computer and controls it completely. It can do damage to you, but think what would happen if it got past a bank's servers or something—this sort of thing you gotta call in. And you have _no_ idea where you guys picked it up?"

Danny shook his head. "Mike's a gamer, hangs out on a lot of gaming sites. I'm more into music blogs and YouTube. We don't share any classes together. And we haven't emailed anything back and forth lately, or anything. There's not much crossover in our online footprint."

Ryan blew out a breath. "And nobody else has reported this, so it's not something widespread … yet. Maybe it's specifically targeted to you guys—made any enemies lately?"

Danny froze. He hadn't thought of that. "I've got a stalker, that count?"

"Yeah, maybe, if he's a tech guy," Ryan said. "That sucks, man."

"I got an invitation to a job interview a month ago out of the blue," Danny said. "Turns out, the guy who set it up wanted me to sell him some stuff of my dad's."

"What—oh, yeah, that's right, your dad was Miles Dyson," Ryan said. "The cyberneticist killed by terrorists."

"Yeah," Danny said. "And this guy thinks I have some of his stuff and wants to buy it, particularly anything programming-related. He was really weird about it, too."

"That was, what, ten years ago? Fifteen?"

"Fourteen," Danny said.

"Your Dad was brilliant and groundbreaking, but the cutting edge has taken a quantum leap since then," Ryan said. "Why would his stuff matter now?"

"I don't know," Danny said. "But one of the Security guys from his company has been stalking me ever since. And he's not exactly subtle about it, either.

"Wow," Ryan said. "But if there's even a chance of this being a targeted attack, we _have_ to get help. People release a virus for kicks and giggles, that's bad. But people who target them _never_ just target one person and then go away. We have _got_ to get a handle on this. And, I'm sorry, but I don't know when you'll get your laptop back."

"Right," Danny said, rubbing a hand over his face. He checked the time on his cellphone. "Look, I can't hang around any longer, I've got a paper to finish that's due tomorrow by eight am."

"Right," Ryan said. "I've got your number, I'll keep you posted."

On the way across campus to the library, Danny spotted something glinting in the darkness under some trees. It could have been his stalker, or it might not.

He had a hell of a time concentrating on his paper.

* * *

Ryan, Danny, and Mike were called in the next day by Doctor Brown, the head of the computer science department. He had a digital security expert with him. They grilled the two of them about websites they'd visited recently and any enemies they might have, any valuable information that someone might want to steal or suppress. The only thing either of them could think of was Atkinson from Kaliba group and his interest in Danny's father's work.

After going around and around a few times without coming up with any other theories, Danny had had enough.

"Look, have you guys figured out what that virus actually does?" Danny asked. "I can't tell you anything more about who might have done it, and I'd like to know what it did."

"It looks like it was designed to search out certain types of information," the security expert said. "Contact lists, but also we think it was looking for something. When it found that something, it was supposed to send it out to somewhere else—where, we don't know. Then it was supposed to scramble your hard drive, which it's done. And it infects any computer we connect to it, so we've had to keep your two laptops completely quarantined. I hope you had good backups."

"Yeah, of course," Danny said.

Mike groaned.

"Seriously?" Danny said, looking over at his friend.

"I suggest you bring in whatever backups you have, and let us check them for the virus before you hook them up to anything else," Doctor Brown said.

"Right," Danny said, because who knew how long the virus had been lurking on his computer?

As they left the conference room, Mike shook his head. "I am so, so sorry I ever encouraged you to go to that interview, man," he said.

"Nah, s'okay," Danny said. "They were targeting me—they'd have found some other way."

* * *

But when they got back to their dorm room, the place was trashed. "What the hell?" Mike said, picking through the debris on the floor. "You can't tell me nobody heard this."

"You got your cell?" Danny said. "Call the cops."

"Campus cops?"

"Them, too," Danny said. He looked around at the damage. The furniture was okay, but the posters from the walls were torn, books were in pieces, clothing ripped apart to see if anything was hidden in the seams.

"Oh! Right." Mike pulled out his cell phone and went out into the hall, poking at it. "Hey, Adam!" he called. "Do you have the number for the campus cops?"

Danny rolled his eyes. _He'd_ put them on speed dial. The gun safe was broken open, but the remaining ammunition and gun cleaning equipment was still there. He couldn't take the chance of the cops seeing it, so he closed it up and wrapped some packing tape around it to keep it closed despite the busted lock—the tape had been sitting around for days, waiting for Mike to box his stuff up to store over the summer. Danny tucked the safe under his arm and ducked out into the hall, down a few doors to Justin's room.

He knocked on the door, glancing nervously around. Fortunately, Justin was quick about it. As always, a whiff of incense came with Justin. "Hey, bro," Justin said, "how's it hanging?"

Danny had avoided Justin because the _last_ thing he needed was to get labeled as a drug source—he already had random fellow-students approach him sometimes thinking he was a dealer, not a student. But now he needed him. "Hey man, somebody trashed my dorm room," he said.

"Oh, yeah, I heard something," Justin said. "Not long ago, was it? Sorry I didn't poke my head out the door or anything."

"Right." Danny wasn't about to say it was okay; if Justin had been paying attention, he could have called the cops and maybe caught the guy in the act. "Anyway, the cops will be out to look at it, and I can't have them find this." He waggled the case. Justin wouldn't recognize what it was.

"Oh, no problem dude," Justin said, taking it. "I'll put it under my laundry. Trust me, nobody's gonna _want_ to look there."

"I believe you," Danny said. "Thanks, I owe you one."

"Next time my laptop quits on me—"

"I'll take care of it," Danny said.

* * *

The campus cops got there first, and were predictably useless in the face of an actual crime. They asked some questions, but it was clear they wanted to see this as a prank gone wrong, not anything serious. Danny let Mike give most of the answers; he didn't know if they'd listen as closely when he told them, and this was too important to take the chance. The _real_ police got there eventually, and Danny and Mike got to tell the whole story again from the beginning as the cops processed the scene for evidence. Which mostly seemed to consist of getting black fingerprint powder all over everything. (Danny hoped it cleaned up well.)

"Look, I wish I could tell you something more positive," the cop interviewing them told Mike. "We'll run the prints, see what comes up. If this Jones is in the system, and he's the one who did it, we'll pick him up. But it's still only a couple of thousand bucks of property damage, _if_ that. He pays a fine, he spends a couple months in jail—maybe only probation and counseling, if he's got a good lawyer and a soft judge—and he's out and back at it again."

"You're kidding," Mike said.

"Hey, can I get through here?" Danny glanced up to see Lamar from down the hall standing there, hands in his pockets. "I got a final to take."

"Sorry," Danny said, standing aside to let him through. They were kind of blocking the hallway, here. Mike stood back. The cop didn't move. Asshole.

"'Fraid so," the cop said with a shrug once Lamar was past them. "Not much we can do about nutcases like this. You should get a restraining order, though—then you can call us next time you see him and we'll pick him up for violating it."

"If that's the best we can do," Danny said. He wasn't actually disappointed; it was more than he was expecting. It still sucked, though.

"Yeah," the cop said. "We can't hassle him without a reason."

Danny didn't let his reaction to _that_ show on his face. If it was a black guy harassing a white guy, would the cop still say that?

Mike shrugged. "So, how do we—"

Two gunshots cut him off. A double-tap. Danny jerked back, hand going to his bag. It was probably from outside, but it couldn't be far.

“Get back into your room and lock the door!” said the cop, stabbing one finger towards their room before grabbing his radio, yelling into it as he ran down the hall.

"We should get out of the hall," Danny said, heart pounding. Their room was blocked off with crime scene tape, and the destroyed belongings wouldn't provide much cover or camouflage. Not to mention being the first place someone would look.

"Yeah," Mike said.

Down the hall, Justin's door opened and Justin poked his head out. "Hey, guys," he said, "was that …?"

"Gunshots," Mike said.

Danny was already on the move. "Hey, our room's off-limits and we want to get out of the hall, can we hide with you?"

"Sure," Justin said, blinking.

Justin's room was surprisingly normal given the amount of incense you could always smell walking by: no drug equipment was sitting out, though Danny wondered if it was next to his gun safe under the pile of dirty laundry in the closet. "Where's your roommate?" Danny said, going over to close the curtains so nobody could see in.

"Left already," Justin said. "He had projects instead of finals and he turned them in early so he could head out—some family thing or something. "Want me to lock the door?"

"Yes!" Mike said, nodding fiercely. "That would be _awesome_."

"Is this like Virginia Tech?" Justin asked.

"I don't know," Danny said. He thought, _I hope so_. If it were a troubled student who snapped, it probably wouldn’t be someone targeting _him_.

Justin's phone chimed with a text. Danny and Mike's phones did too.

"It's a campus alert," Mike said, unnecessarily. "We're supposed to lock our doors and close the curtains and hide. Shooter is a white male, probably early thirties."

"Is it the stalker?" Justin said. Everyone in the dorm knew about him, though not all had spotted him.

"Maybe," Mike said. "But why would he have shot someone else? It's Danny here he's always following."

"Oh, man, I hope I'm wrong," Danny said, heart sinking.

"What?" Justin asked.

"Lamar was heading out just before we heard the shots," Danny said.

"So?" said Mike.

"So, he's about my size, about my skin color, and wasn't he wearing a school hoodie?"

Mike's eyes widened. "I think he was, dude, and you have one just like it."

Danny swallowed, feeling very small.

* * *

It took hours for the all-clear to come, but with it came a caution advisory—the shooter got away.

The victim was, indeed, Lamar Johnson. A witnesses said the man had grabbed him from behind and begun to drag him off, only to stop and shoot him when he got a good look at him.

Danny had called his mom to reassure her he was fine—they all had; it was all over the news and everyone was scared—but hadn't gone into any of the details. And certainly nothing about what he was planning. It would be too easy to listen in.

"You need to go to the cops, get witness protection or something," Mike said. Justin was letting them camp out in his room for the night since their own was unusable.

"They killed my Dad, forgive me if I don't trust them," Danny said.

"Wait, wait, _what_?" Justin said. "You have to give me the whole story."

"My Dad was a cyberneticist, he designed robots, and he was one of the best in his field," Danny said. "An anti-technology terrorist named Sarah Connor kidnapped him when I was a kid and took him into the building he worked in so she could sabotage things. The SWAT team somehow managed to kill my dad—the black hostage—while missing all the _actual_ terrorists … who just so happened to be white. And then they blamed his death on the terrorists. If the SWAT team leader hadn't confessed to my Mom privately a couple of years back, we _still_ wouldn't know. And we keep getting people asking if Dad took some of his work home with him. As far as I know, he never did, but they keep asking. A couple weeks ago someone approached me with a job offer as an excuse to meet me and ask if I had any of my dad's stuff—but especially programming, which is weird because that wasn't his field—that I might be willing to sell. I turned them down, and now one of the security guys from the company is stalking me."

"And then both our laptops got fried with a new virus designed to seek out information and send it home," Mike put in. "And we get back to our dorm room from tech services to find our place trashed and all our tech stuff gone."

"What?" Danny said.

"Hey, man, you didn't notice?" Mike said. "My iPod wasn't in its dock, and I _know_ I left it there. Your back up harddrive was gone, too. I didn't spot anything else missing—mostly destroyed—but," he shrugged. "It was kinda hard to tell. But those, I noticed."

"Shit," Justin said. "And now a guy who looks like you is dead. This is heavy stuff, man, what are you going to do?"

"I don't know," Danny said.

"What about your mom?" Justin asked.

"What about her?"

"I mean, why haven't they gone after your mom," Justin said. "Wouldn't _she_ be more likely to have anything at home than you would in your dorm room?"

Danny shrugged. "Six months or so ago our house got robbed while Mom was on vacation," he said. "We thought it was just a robbery, but it could have been a cover for searching the house. I mean, anyone with access to her Facebook would have known she was going to be gone for a week and that both my sister and I would also be away. Plenty of time to search the place."

"And if your Mom does have something, and they kidnap you, they can force her to hand it over," Mike pointed out.

Danny made a face at him. "Thank you for that wonderfully cheery thought," he said. "I've got to get out of here. I've got to get ahold of my Mom." He turned to Justin. "Does your landline work?" The dorm rooms still had them installed in every room, but you had to ask to have them activated. Most students didn't bother because they had cell phones.

"No, of course not," Justin said.

"Why not just call on your cell phone?" Mike asked.

"Because anybody with the right scanner can listen in," Danny explained, rubbing the back of his neck. His mom would understand, but she'd still be mad he hadn't found a way to contact her. "And if they can program a virus like that, they can figure out a damn scanner."

"Right," Mike said. "So, what we need is a way to get you off campus without Jones from Security—or anyone else watching—seeing you. You can leave your cell here, and then call from a landline or something once you're away and coordinate what you're going to do with your mom."

"Yeah," Danny said. "If I can get away from here without our friendly neighborhood stalker-shooter knowing, I've got a lot more options."

"Well," Justin said hesitantly, "it _is_ the end of the school year. And people are going to be leaving in droves after this. What if we just … pack you in a box and put you in the back of someone's car? Then we stop a couple of miles away from campus and let you out."

"That could work," Danny said.

"Yeah, but it can't be my car," Mike said. "If they've been watching, they know we're roommates and friends. And they targeted my computer too, not just yours, so they think I might be holding information for you. They might follow me."

"They won't suspect me," Justin pointed out. "We don't share any classes, we don't share any extracurriculars or hobbies, there is nothing to connect us on paper besides living in the same dorm, and they can't follow everyone from the dorm who's going home, can they?"

"If they can, we've got more problems than we can solve," Danny said. "Would you do it?"

"Sure," Justin said.

* * *

The next day, Danny curled up in a cardboard box while Justin and a couple of guys from their floor (but not Mike) helped Justin load his stuff out into a car.

"Dude, what do you have _in_ this thing?" one of them asked as they dropped Danny's box on the back seat.

"Stuff," Justin said vaguely. Danny reflected that there were some times that a reputation for being a stoner could help. Justin could be vague about anything and people would only shrug.

It was a pretty uncomfortable ride, and they'd planned to make sure they were _long_ outside the range of anybody watching campus before stopping, so they had a ways to go.

Once they were off campus, Justin picked up speed. Danny could tell when they hit the ramp to the interstate. It felt like a weight came off his chest and he could breathe all of a sudden. He had to blink back tears. They'd done it! He was _away_ , he was safe!

Danny didn't know where he was going or what was going to happen next, but he could worry about that tomorrow. For now, he let the rocking of the car lull him to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [dreamwidth](http://beatrice-otter.dreamwidth.org/) and [tumblr](http://beatrice-otter.tumblr.com/).


End file.
